Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

When did the Princess Royal start looking like her Aunt Margaret?

 

She probably always did. My mom was a dead ringer for her aunt when she was a kid; I have pictures of them taken 30 years apart and it could be the same person or mother-daughter.

 

A Reader's Digest humorous anecdote I liked so much I have semi-remembered it lo, these many years, involves a senior British military officer at a cocktail party finding himself in conversation with a middle aged woman he feels he should know but can't place. Guessing there's a connection with his military service, he fishes: How's you father? Oh, my father's dead. Embarrassed but determined: How's your brother? Oh, I never had a brother. In desperation: How's your sister? Oh, she's fine. Still Queen.

 

New girl, Flora, signed by Luigi Michelini, using a section of helmet shell taken from under a horn, which gives a high degree of curvature to the blank and the face a lot of depth. Also defeats my meager photographic powers to capture well.

 

Some poor carver had a job and a half making that one! Looks like you scored.

 

Thanks. Michelini started out in Rome but moved to Paris 1929/30. He not only made his own work, he was also proprietor of a shop. In Paris he was taken under the wing of Girometti, who urged him to move into working hardstone. I have other pieces by him & it is interesting to see how his skill developed. All but one of mine are shell, but suspect he continued to work in that medium even as he was also making some hardstone pieces. The one hardstone cameo of his that I have seems to be what I would call a bread & butter piece, something he could make relatively quickly & easily and made repeatedly. Here's another of his more accomplished shell pieces:

 

Some mysteries I may never solve. One is the identity of a Victorian era cameist who seems to have signed even his crudest work and, judging by the frequency with which his pieces turn up for sale, to have been very prolific. I have photos of 22 of his cameos, 4 of them mine, and lost 1 or 2 others when a flash drive went bad. Most of the time his signature looks like 'Silz', occasionally I see what looks like 'Sel' or 'Sll', but a couple of examples have a longer name, irritatingly not quite legible, that does start with S, end with Z & has 2 Ls in between. This is my latest 'Silz':



I have never seen any work of his that is really top quality; this is one of his more accomplished pieces. It has a feature you see on helmet shell cameos only now and then: the cutter has polished the white layer. Most of the time Silz and all other cutters left it in its natural matte state.

 

Bronwen, what does the above scene signify? I think of Adam and Eve being led out of the Garden.

 

You might say that comes later. This is more symbolic/allegorical: Hymenaios, god of marriage, leading a betrothed couple to the altar.

This scene has long been known as the Marriage of Cupid & Psyche, although there is scholarly doubt about whether that is what the original this Wedgwood & others like it are based on was really meant to be depicting:



This is another scene of a couple being brought together:



I have seen a cameo of the Expulsion from Eden at a show but do not have a photo. The couple look like they are fleeing, not being led anywhere. Adam & Eve are actually not seen very often; when they are, this Renaissance cameo in the V&A is more typical:

 

Wow, great stuff, thanks!!!

 

Just what’s going on in this cameo?

 

Good question. I don't think anyone has studied or written about cameos like this, or given them a name. Early in the 20th century, cameo cutting seems to have had a revival, after seriously falling off for a time. I think of it as sort of Italien Nouveau. Pieces from that time are much more skillfully done than contemporary productions, & work still had to be done completely by eye & hand. What changed radically was the subject matter. Old conventions & the tales behind them were a strong influence, but they began to be altered & recombined in fantastical ways.

The elements in this one strike chords of the story of Cupid & Psyche, how Venus is beside herself at the idea of having a mortal for a daughter-in-law (& half-breed grandchildren), but how, despite her attempts to get Psyche killed, the girl is ultimately rescued & brought to Olympus, where she & Cupid are married.

There are images of her ascension back on page 15 of this thread. Bouguereau depicted the two of them as young adults. On cameos it is more typical for Cupid to be left as the chubby toddler we think of while Psyche is grown up. Figures in the clouds are usually meant to be on Olympus, except in explicitly religious scenes. The torch is an attribute proper to both Cupid & Hymenaios, the god of marriage, dropped here because all 4 hands are needed to push & pull. The distraught soon-to-be mother-in-law is off to the side.

This style has now (d)evolved into one that looks cartoonish to me & can be so scrambled there's no knowing what the cutter had in mind.

 

Thank you, Bronwen, for such a complete and interesting reply! This is not my cameo but one I considered purchasing at a local estate sale (photo borrowed from their listing on estatesales dot net). I decided the subject matter was just too ambiguous and didn't even attend the sale, so I don't know what their asking price was. There was a photo of the back, too... no signature.

 

I like this one better than most from this period & later, but with funds & space limited, I try to stick to things that appeal to me, sometimes it's for their humor more than their beauty.

Looking at this one again, the figure on the right may also be meant for Psyche, if rather than a billow of scarf, that is one of her characteristic squared off wings behind her:

 

This one is especially for @BoudiccaJones She is really an Amazon, the pelta (shield) and labrys (double-headed axe) are the clues, but what do auctioneers know:



This is one of mine. It shows one of her comrades trying to get Penthesilea's body away from Achilles:

 

These are fab,I love them. I have a few cameos but not nice like these. I want to see them now but I know they are buried under mountains of others ahem stuffs

 

Looking through cameos of historical figures to see if I could help with an inquiry about a medallion, came across this one of mine & thought I'd put it up, this time especially for @kyratango Henri III of France, after a medal by Caqué, who did 2 series of medals of the Kings of France.

 

Lovely of you , Bronwen!
How interesting it is to see side by side the inspirational medal and the cameo!

 

I wonder which of the 3 representations got the size of that pearl right?